It’s been over a month since I stopped using the YouTube recommended feed. I haven’t used it to go lookup funny videos. The only uses I’ve permitted myself to engage in are watching videos that teach me something for work, or listening to World of Warcraft (WoW) music.
I’ve been paying for YouTube Music for many months but lately I haven’t been using it anymore. I don’t feel like the singers I used to listen to have anything to say to me. The people I encounter while going about my daily life don’t have anything groundbreaking to tell me. My old friends stopped saying interesting things to me awhile ago. Why should I expect Jihyo of Twice to have anything to say to me? If she doesn’t, I don’t want to listen to her music. At least that is the thought that has popped into my head when I’ve tried to listen to Cactus, or other songs like Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus. So I haven’t been using my YouTube music subscription lately.
There are other forms of touch with my society that I cut off. I haven’t paid any attention to news outlets like Fox News or CNN in many months. I have no interest in ShoeOnHead’s commentary. I don’t look at Twitter. I stopped using Facebook years ago. Instagram I do not use. Reddit I do not use, save for when a Google search takes me there. I did experiment with TikTok but that came to an end months ago. I don’t use any of the streaming services. No HBOMax or Netflix.
The only site I’ve been using that delivers relatively current thoughts is twitch.tv. I don’t use it to watch wow streams because I’m afraid of spoilers. So I’m not sure what I see in it sometimes. But I’ll at least open it and browse around, as if I expect to find something there.
Wow is the thing I really enjoy. I love planning content consumption in wow. I play it because it is beautiful. It’s fun hiding in my room, doing a dungeon, chilling for an hour, then doing another. I get so cozy that I just order Postmates so that I don’t have to leave my room. Questing is tiring but also something I enjoy.
It’s so easy for me to steer clear of the world I live in, and to only interact with it through wow. Wow is like a shelter for me. It enables me to live my life with something to consume, while avoiding the vast majority of mainstream thought.
It’d be nice if I could keep this home for myself for a long time.
